I have found that long letters complaining about the singal to noise ratio (especially quasi-inflamatory ones that demand replies) seldom help improve it.
If some of the more pointless arguments (like the whole metadata thing) count as signal, then this list has a very high signal to noise ration, so I really don't think 15 or so letters on a single occation is reason enough to bitch. Anyways, something good came of it since I just made the clients capable of encrypting the data they write to disk - what has anybody else coded for freenet today? I complained myself when we had Creationist flamebate discussions going 100 mails +, but this was hardly that. On Mon, Aug 21, 2000 at 10:52:26AM -0500, Will Dye wrote: > > > Under the thread "my test of 0.3", which had strayed into a > discussion of machine guns and thermite, Michael & Brandon write: > > >> Should a freenet-tangent mailing list be created :] > > > That is called freenet-chat. Please take discussion of thermite > > to freenet-chat. > > Seconded. I'm an experienced software developer, who's looking for > a good open-source Java program to which I could contribute. I have > some ideas about making a "Chinese dissident" variant of Freenet, > which would attempt to address some very(!) difficult design issues. > If I make the commitment to develop such a variant, it would be all > but mandatory that I read the dev list pretty much every day, for > the next several years. > > This morning I've opened up a folder of some 150 messages, many of > which are very much off-topic. The thread on killing people and > blowing up things was particularly frustrating. The exchange was so > completely clueless that I figured it was all just humor, but it's > difficult to tell. I really don't want to spend time responding on > the thread, but then I worry that if such tripe goes unchallenged, > someone out there will get some disasterously stupid ideas. > > Even worse, while the thread was decidedly off-topic for Freenet, it > was on-topic for the variant I'm interested in developing. Perhaps > the developers here are so totally clueless about true real-world > persecution that they'll make design decisions that will greatly > complicate the implementation of a true dissident-mode variant. The > needs of English-speaking western college students swapping mp3's > and porn on fat-pipe Linux systems are very, very different from the > needs of a dissident-mode variant. Small changes in the base code > can make a big difference in how easily it can be modified for > alternate environments. > > It's good to have some occasional off-topic banter, speculation, > and humor. That's especially true on a list that is low-volume, > and/or used by just a few people. This list, however, is very > high-volume, is of interest to a large audience, and is pretty much > mandatory reading for people who want to help with development. In > that sort of situation, it makes sense to be very, very disciplined > about keeping messages on-topic. Messages should even go so far as > to carefully adhere to the subject line, so that others can filter > without having to read the entire body of each message. > > Bah. If contributing to Freenet means spending half an hour per day > finding a weak signal amidst this kind of noise, then forget it. > It's time to find a project where I can spend my time coding instead > of grepping. > > > --Will > > (not speaking for my employers, though they would probably agree > with me on this point) > > willdye at freedom.net > > > > _______________________________________________ > Freenet-dev mailing list > Freenet-dev at lists.sourceforge.net > http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/freenet-dev > -- \oskar _______________________________________________ Freenet-dev mailing list Freenet-dev at lists.sourceforge.net http://lists.sourceforge.net/mailman/listinfo/freenet-dev
